Costs of Madore’s Alternative 4 add up for Clark County

Clark County taxpayers may never know how much it cost for Councilor David Madore to create his now defunct Alternative 4 — but there’s no doubt that to date, the alternative has added tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs to the county’s 20-year growth plan.

With several months of work to go before Clark County submits its plan to the state Commerce Department, the county’s Community Planning department has spent about $1.29 million since mid-2013 on the 2016 Comprehensive Growth Management Plan update. The zoning and growth plan will determine where and how the county prepares for two decades of projected growth.

Exactly how much of that went to Madore’s Alternative 4, policies related to the alternative, and early work by the Clark County council on a rural plan is unclear. Community Planning Director Oliver Orjiako, however, said the county has undoubtedly “incurred extra costs” as a result of Alternative 4.

Some costs of Alternative 4, which would have allowed some rural landowners to subdivide their properties further than currently allowed, are obvious.

The county, for example, approved a $50,000 contract with Mercer-Island-based R.W. Thorpe and Associates to analyze planning assumptions written by Madore, a Republican, to support Alternative 4. Documents from Community Planning indicate that the county has so far paid about $17,600 of that contract.

The county also had to pay additional costs to Environmental Science Associates, a Seattle firm conducting the environmental review of the plan, as a result of Alternative 4. Last year, the county council approved an additional $41,267 for Alternative 4. That increased its original $99,936 contract with the firm to more than $141,000. With the final environmental review still to go, the county has paid $104,210 so far for that contract.

Information from the county’s Geographic Information Systems department also reveals details about the cost of Alternative 4. The GIS department, which develops maps for the comprehensive growth management plan, dedicated about $54,270 in staff time to create Alternatives 1, 2 and 3, zoning proposals developed by professional planning staff.

But early work researching a rural alternative at the request of the Clark County council, as well the development of Alternative 4, cost about $38,590 in staff time, according to county documents obtained through a public records request. That’s about 71 percent of the combined costs of the previous three alternatives.

Work on Alternative 4 likely cost county taxpayers more, though it is impossible to break down exactly how much more based on the county’s accounting records. Community planning staffers, for example, do log the number of hours they spend working on the growth plan, but do not specify exactly what they’re working on.

Alternative 4, which has been at the heart of controversy over the growth plan for more than a year, was removed as the county’s preferred alternative at a heated and emotional meeting last week. The council instead approved a preferred alternative made up of proposals developed by the county’s planning staff.

The council will confirm its preferred alternative at its 6 p.m. meeting today at the Public Service Center at 1300 Franklin St. in Vancouver.